White dwarf | EPFL Graph Search

Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?

Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of GraphSearch.

A white dwarf is a stellar core remnant composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. A white dwarf is very dense: its mass is comparable to the Sun's, while its volume is comparable to the Earth's. A white dwarf's low luminosity comes from the emission of residual thermal energy; no fusion takes place in a white dwarf. The nearest known white dwarf is Sirius B, at 8.6 light years, the smaller component of the Sirius binary star. There are currently thought to be eight white dwarfs among the hundred star systems nearest the Sun. The unusual faintness of white dwarfs was first recognized in 1910. The name white dwarf was coined by Willem Luyten in 1922. White dwarfs are thought to be the final evolutionary state of stars whose mass is not high enough to become a neutron star or black hole. This includes over 97% of the stars in the Milky Way. After the hydrogen-fusing period of a

About this result

This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Related publications (21)

Related publications

Related people (5)

Related people

Related units (2)

Related units

Related concepts (165)

Related concepts

Related courses (9)

Related courses

Related lectures (20)

Related lectures

PHYS-209: Astrophysics I: introduction to astrophysics

Ce cours décrit de façon simple les processus physiques qui expliquent l'univers dans lequel nous vivons. En couvrant une large gamme de sujets, le but du cours est aussi de donner un aperçu général des objets astrophysiques qui nous entourent.

PHYS-323: Astrophysics II

Ce cours est une introduction à la physique stellaire. On y expose les notions indispensables à la compréhension du fonctionnement d'une étoile et à la construction de modèles de structure interne et d'évolution stellaires. On donne aussi des clés d'interprétation des spectres stellaires.

PHYS-402: Astrophysics IV : observational cosmology

Cosmology is the study of the structure and evolution of the universe as a whole. This course describes the principal themes of cosmology, as seen from the point of view of observations.

Star

A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma held together by self-gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night;

Supernova

A supernova (: supernovae or supernovas) is a powerful and luminous explosion of a star. A supernova occurs during the last evolutionary stages of a massive star or when a white dwarf is triggered in

Neutron star

A neutron star is the collapsed core of a massive supergiant star, which had a total mass of between 10 and 25 solar masses (), possibly more if the star was especially metal-rich. Except for black

The post-infall evolution of a satellite galaxy

Pascale Jablonka, Matthew Luke Nichols, Yves Revaz

We describe a new method that only focuses on the local region surrounding an infalling dwarf in an effort to understand how the hot baryonic halo alters the chemodynamical evolution of dwarf galaxies. Using this method, we examine how a dwarf, similar to Sextans dwarf spheroidal, evolves in the corona of a Milky Way-like galaxy. We find that even at high perigalacticons the synergistic interaction between ram pressure and tidal forces transform a dwarf into a stream, suggesting that Sextans was much more massive in the past to have survived its perigalacticon passage. In addition, the large confining pressure of the hot corona allows gas that was originally at the outskirts to begin forming stars, initially forming stars of low metallicity compared to the dwarf evolved in isolation. This increase in star formation eventually allows a dwarf galaxy to form more metal rich stars compared to a dwarf in isolation, but only if the dwarf retains gas for a sufficiently long period of time. In addition, dwarfs that formed substantial numbers of stars post-infall have a slightly elevated [Mg/Fe] at high metallicity ([Fe/H] similar to -1.5).

Edp Sciences S A2015

The Pristine survey - XV. A CHIT ESPaDOnS view on the Milky Way halo and disc populations

Pascale Jablonka, Carmela Lardo, Romain Ely Roland Lucchesi, Willem Suter

We present a one-dimensional, local thermodynamic equilibrium homogeneous analysis of 132 stars observed at high resolution with ESPaDOnS. This represents the largest sample observed at high resolution (R similar to 40 000) from the Pristine survey. This sample is based on the first version of the Pristine catalogue and covers the full range of metallicities from [Fe/II] similar to-3 to similar to+0.25, with nearly half of our sample (58 stars) composed of very metal-poor (VMP) stars ([Fe/H]

OXFORD UNIV PRESS2022

Barium and related stars, and their white-dwarf companions

Pierre North

Barium (Ba) dwarfs and CH subgiants are the less evolved analogues of Ba and CH giants. They are F- to G-type main-sequence stars polluted with heavy elements by their binary companions when the companion was on the asymptotic giant branch (AGB). This companion is now a white dwarf that in most cases cannot be directly detected. We present a large systematic study of 60 objects classified as Ba dwarfs or CH subgiants. Combining radial-velocity measurements from HERMES and SALT high-resolution spectra with radial-velocity data from CORAVEL and CORALIE, we determine the orbital parameters of 27 systems. We also derive their masses by comparing their location in the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram with evolutionary models. We confirm that Ba dwarfs and CH subgiants are not at different evolutionary stages, and that they have similar metallicities, despite their different names. Additionally, Ba giants appear significantly more massive than their main-sequence analogues. This is likely due to observational biases against the detection of hotter main-sequence post-mass-transfer objects. Combining our spectroscopic orbits with the HIPPARCOS astrometric data, we derive the orbital inclination and the mass of the WD companion for four systems. Since this cannot be done for all systems in our sample yet (but should be possible with upcoming Gaia data releases), we also analyse the mass-function distribution of our binaries. We can model this distribution with very narrow mass distributions for the two components and random orbital orientations on the sky. Finally, based on BINSTAR evolutionary models, we suggest that the orbital evolution of low-mass Ba systems can be affected by a second phase of interactions along the red giant branch of the Ba star, which impact the eccentricities and periods of the giants.

EDP SCIENCES S A2019